D&D General What are the boundaries of what counts as part ot Forgotten Realms?

[Amphytrion]

The past has taught me me that if something isn’t Forgotten Realms yet, it is only a matter of time.

Realmspace is it more Forgotten Realms, Spelljammer, joint custody, something else?

And the divine afterlives, Fugitive Plane seems 100% FR as no other setting seems to use it, but what about Godly domains that are specific to FR Gods like Shar, Selune, Torm, Bhaal, etc...?

I think they’re both, i.e. joint custody, because they’re both part of the FR universe and the multiverse at large.

In Planescape, you can visit the realms of gods from multiple different settings, and they remain also attached to their original settings.

And what of the ecoplanes? I think the Feywild & Shadowfell mirrors of Toril other worlds in Realmspace would count as FR, but not say Feywild & Shadowfell the mirror worlds for Oerth.

James Wyatt has elegantly solved this by suggesting that the Feywild and the Shadowfell are mirrors of the First World, before it splintered. So there are parts of those planes that mirror Toril, and there are parts that are very different.

This is similar to how there are multiple settings, but only one of each Outer Plane that all those settings share.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I've been wondering about this even before the Lorwyn scandal.

Scandal! Really!

To me, base minimium Toril is Forgotten Realms, but some folks concider Al Qadim or even Kara Tur as separate settings, instead of subsettings within the Forgotten Realms like Arcane Age.

Abeir is would also be 100% Forgotten Realms, could they treat it as separate? Sure, but honestly I think even WotC sees it as part of FR.

From this point I think things become interestingly debatable as FR starts over lapping with other settings.

Realmspace is it more Forgotten Realms, Spelljammer, joint custody, something else?

And the divine afterlives, Fugitive Plane seems 100% FR as no other setting seems to use it, but what about Godly domains that are specific to FR Gods like Shar, Selune, Torm, Bhaal, etc...?

And what of the ecoplanes? I think the Feywild & Shadowfell mirrors of Toril other worlds in Realmspace would count as FR, but not say Feywild & Shadowfell the mirror worlds for Oerth.

It just seems messy compared say Star Trek or Star Wars, Middle Earth, Doctor Who, etc..., which have harder barriers then FR.

Warhammer is somewhere in the middle between D&D settings and most other fantasy/sci fi settings.

Thoughts?

Mostly I don't really care what the official lore is. It is all legos that I can use for my own purposes. In so far as I think of the Realms, I see it as Faerun with everything else as extra.
As for stuff like the Planes, Feywild and so on, I see them as separate entities, at least named places like Lorwyn. The fact of portals to the Moonshaes are neither here nor there as it does not (in my mind tie it to anywhere). That is not to say that there is not a local echo of a location in the Feywild or Shadowfell if I want one.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

There's a well established precedent of Raveloft Domains of Dread as "counting" as being both Ravenloft and the setting they're from: Cyre 1313 is Ravenloft AND Eberron, Kalidnay is Ravenloft AND Dark Sun and I'Cath, Kirlanova and Hazlan belong to Ravenloft AND FR. The shadowfell and feywild alike are often said to overlap with the material plane; I don't see why Lorwyn can't be the Feywild AND Forgotten realms, or even share NPCs like Dragonlance and Ravenloft laying claim to Soth like divorced parents.

 

[TwoSix]

What does "counts as" even mean? Is there a formalized recognition process, or some place that actually tracks this? Is there a recognized arbiter? Or is this purely about determining some kind of colloquial meaning?

 

[dave2008]

I've been wondering about this even before the Lorwyn scandal.

To me, base minimium Toril is Forgotten Realms, but some folks concider Al Qadim or even Kara Tur as separate settings, instead of subsettings within the Forgotten Realms like Arcane Age.

Abeir is would also be 100% Forgotten Realms, could they treat it as separate? Sure, but honestly I think even WotC sees it as part of FR.

From this point I think things become interestingly debatable as FR starts over lapping with other settings.

Realmspace is it more Forgotten Realms, Spelljammer, joint custody, something else?

And the divine afterlives, Fugitive Plane seems 100% FR as no other setting seems to use it, but what about Godly domains that are specific to FR Gods like Shar, Selune, Torm, Bhaal, etc...?

And what of the ecoplanes? I think the Feywild & Shadowfell mirrors of Toril other worlds in Realmspace would count as FR, but not say Feywild & Shadowfell the mirror worlds for Oerth.

It just seems messy compared say Star Trek or Star Wars, Middle Earth, Doctor Who, etc..., which have harder barriers then FR.

Warhammer is somewhere in the middle between D&D settings and most other fantasy/sci fi settings.

Thoughts?

IMO, the setting of FR is Toril. Anything on Toril is the assumed setting of FR. Anything outside Toril: Feywild, Shadowdark, elemental planes, great wheel, etc. is connected but not specifically part of FR. Those areas are part of the larger D&D setting.

 

[aco175]

What does "counts as" even mean? Is there a formalized recognition process, or some place that actually tracks this? Is there a recognized arbiter? Or is this purely about determining some kind of colloquial meaning?

I believe it counts if profit can be made due to the Pokémon effect of catching them all. It works.

 

[TwoSix]

Forgotten Realms, Magic: the Gathering, Dragonlance, Ravenloft....in the end, it's all just Planescape to me.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

Forgotten Realms, Magic: the Gathering, Dragonlance, Ravenloft....in the end, it's all just Planescape to me.

We're all really just playing 15th Edition Braunstein when you sit down and really think of it.

 

[Morrus]

I've been wondering about this even before the Lorwyn scandal.

What is the "Lorywn scandal"?

 

[Laurefindel]

When I say Forgotten Realms, I mean Faerun. There are many tangential settings with permeable barriers, some geographically nearby, some astrally accessible, but my Forgotten Realms games were mostly concerned with the populations, cultures, trades, and dangers of Faerun. Those are all part of the same macrocosm and “meta setting”, mostly aware of one another but not interacting much.

This D&D macrocosm is completely separate from other settings such as Star Wars or Warhammer Fantasy/40k for example, but if I’m playing FR, it’s to play in Faerun. I could have a Planescape game with occasional stops in Faerun, or a Ravenloft game that started in Faerun, or a Kara Tur game that trades with Faerun, or an Al Quadim game that mentions the Faeruninan pantheon, but those are Planescape, Ravenloft, Kara Tur, and Al Quadim games; not FR games.

Faerun probably should be the name of the setting but Forgotten Realms stuck, and that’s mainly what it refers to.